Technique, at Le Cordon Bleu

Eating someone's homework! Seriously though. Technique is the restaurant at the Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, so the waiters and chefs are all students. An interesting experience, if you happen to be in the area.

We happen to come the day before their spring break, so the menu was pretty limited by this time. The appetizers were incredibly interesting. The first appetizer we tried consisted of some sort of chicken sausage with a chicken skin 'bacon' and frozen grapes (the cold was quite a surprise), and the second was a plate with two different types of pate. The pate tasted fine, but the idea of eating it out of a flower pot was rather unappealing to me. As for the main courses, everything was kind of... boring. Good, but boring. I got a cheeseburger with fries, which was delicious but not particularly exciting.

Service was terrible, but I guess they ARE still in the learning process. After we ate our appetizers, they gave our main courses to another table who came in after we did but happen to order the same thing. We were completely forgotten. We had to ask about our food, and the waitress got extremely confused. It took maybe about half an hour after our appetizers to get our main course. Blah.

Williams Sonoma Belgian Waffle Mix

Waffles are one of my favorite foods (especially with fried chicken), but sometimes it's stupidly hard to find good, airy waffles. At least there's always the option of making your own.

I was wandering around in a Williams Sonoma store and grabbing random things to read to pass the time. As soon as I grabbed the waffle mix, a lady turned to me and said that that was, without doubt, the BEST waffle mix she had ever tried. Well, I couldn't let someone share with me that kind of information without giving it a try, so I made my brother buy some for me (thanks, Andrew <3). 

Now, onto the review. The first thing I noticed is that if you follow the directions on the can exactly, the mix comes out rather absurdly watery. Also, while it suggests that you leave for 15 minutes (it's a yeast based recipe), I decided to get distracted and let it rise for 2 hours instead. I came back and it was nice and fluffy, but still way too watery. The first waffle I tried to make fell apart because of this. When we added in more mix, the resulting waffle was gorgeous, airy, and extremely buttery. It was fantastic.

Great mix, meh instructions. Follow your instinct, and your stomach.

Huntington Library Tea Room

Huntington Library has a nice Tea Room in their Rose Garden. It's the only afternoon tea place I've ever been to that's been buffet style. While this probably makes things a lot more efficient for them and lets you eat as much as you want (yay eating!), it does take away from the "feel" and atmosphere of the afternoon tea. They don't have very many different teas, mostly fruit teas and their most popular rose tea, so we usually just go for the rose.

Overall, a more casual tea place, but still lovely.

Hana Japanese Restaurant

Pretty (but not all that functional) Chopstick Rest

Ankimo (Monk Fish Liver)

 Amaebi (Sweet Shrimp)

 Fried head of the Amaebi

Sashimi Sampler and Yummy Roll

So there isn't much in the way of Asian culture going on around Rohnert Park, but as far as Asian restaurants Hana is good enough. It's a small restaurant that features fine Japanese cuisine, with gorgeous presentation and a variety of choices.

The food is good, but nothing too crazy. Their selection of sashimi includes more expensive items such as chutoro (fatty tuna) and mirugai (geoduck clam), as well as simpler things such as tamago (egg) and sake (salmon).

Anyways, what really impressed me was their service and honesty. My mom was feeling a little under the weather, and so she didn't finish her nabeyaki udon. After we had paid and left, the waiter called me (they had my number from my reservation) and apologized profusely for the udon, saying that the broth wasn't prepared correctly and that he should have made sure with my mom that the soup was to her liking. He apologized again, then informed us that they had canceled the udon on the bill for their mistake.

Mom thought the udon tasted fine.

  

Miette Macarons

There are tons of places that sell macarons, but the ones from Miette in San Francisco are probably the most unique of all the macarons I've had. They use course ground almond flour instead of the fine kind, and so their cookies have much more of a.... "cookie" texture. I find many fine flour macarons to be chewier and stickier, almost like a cross between a cookie and candy. They also don't add food coloring, which I find actually makes the macarons look more appetizing (I'm not overly fond of artificially colored foods for no particular reason). However, this means that most of the cookies look kind of similar and you have to be able to smell them apart or spot the very tiny difference in color (I accidentally ate my mom's chocolate-orange macaron, thinking it was my chocolate-only one).

The filling of the cookie is very light. You either get a buttercream or a ganache, depending on the flavor. I personally like the buttercream better. Their cookie flavors include vanilla, rose-geranium, pistachio, hazelnut, chocolate, chocolate-orange, and grapefruit, my favorite being the pistachio.

Napoleon, not Neapolitan

So, as I had mentioned before, I'm not really a huge fan of sweets. I like them, but I don't normally go out of my way to acquire them. However, this all becomes a lie when it comes to the napoleon at Aux Delices in Pasadena, a tiny cafe that's barely noticeable on Colorado Blvd. If I could only eat one dessert for the rest of my life, this would be it. As one who appreciates fine napoleons, I've tasted them from all sorts of places, from chinese bakeries to the Laduree and Pierre Herme located in Paris (both of which are more notable for their macarons). However the one in Pasadena is, without compare, the best I've ever had. The pastry layers are beyond flaky, and the filling is the perfect combination of cream and custard without being too sweet. HEAVENLY.

Also whenever I talked about how much I loved napoleons, many of my friends would often go "oh, I've had that flavor of ice cream before too!". No guys, that's Neapolitan.

Photo by Yeang Shin.

Vegas is for Eating

So most people assume that when you go to Vegas, you do the following things: Night clubbing, day clubbing, and drinking your brains out while probably wearing small little hoochie dresses. This time however, we decided to take the trip up to visit a friend and spend a whole weekend eating instead. Worth it.

Friday night: Before the drive, we decided to grab a quick snack at Lawry's The Prime Rib. Ordered mine a medium rare on the rare side. Their spinning salad was great, and their prime rib was great. Most people in the restaurant left with to-go boxes, but not us. We're champions.

Saturday morning breakfast: A Pink's chili-hot-dog burrito. I've never had one before this, but I'll guide you through my steps of discovery.

Step 1: Acquire burrito

Step 2: Open burrito

Step 3: Burrito explodes in hands while I eat it because that's what happens to every burrito I touch. True story (It was still really tasty though).

After that we took our traditional trip to Bouchon to buy macarons. I tried the salted caramel, chocolate, and coffee ones. My friends also tried a raspberry. Their cookies are very pleasantly chewy, but the filling was a bit thin.

As no dessert is complete with coffee, I also ordered an espresso which came in a paper cup WITH A PAPER HANDLE. If you can't tell, I was very excited. Made my day.

Saturday night dinner: Steak frites at Mon Ami Gabi. Their steaks are pounded super thin, so you can't really get quite as rare a steak as you might with a thicker cut, but they're so soft it hardly matters. 

Also, their fries are just as thin and just as delicious. They're more like closet potato chips.

Ok, so we can't go to Vegas without a LITTLE drinking, so we stopped at the Chandelier Bar in the Cosmo to try their funky drinks. Their expensive, funky drinks. We got a few different ones, but my favorite by far was the Dante's Inferno, a concoction of pineapple and cilantro with a wonderful ancho-chile salted rim.

Sunday morning breakfast: Adobada fries at Tacos El Gordo. No better way to energize yourself for a day of outlet shopping than with a mass of cheese, fries, pork (the color reminiscent of that of the chinese 'Cha Siu'), and a generous slathering of guacamole and sour cream. Be warned, some of the other customers who are also trying to obtain some delicious Mexican food goodness are terrible drivers, and you may be stuck in that parking lot for a while surrounded by the sound of angry drivers honking at one another. 

After shopping, we had an early dinner at Bouchon's at The Venetian. 

Their bread was amazing. I'm rarely impressed by restaurant bread because oftentimes the crust is hard or chewy, but theirs was crisp and pleasant.

An appetizer of salmon rilettes (my parents love this).

And a main course of glorified liver and (fried) onions on a bed of mashed cauliflower. It was delicious.

 Vegas is actually an incredible place if you want to try some neat restaurants, especially on the Strip. There are so many choices, many within walking distance of one another. Some of them can get very expensive, but there are plenty of eats that aren't. If you have time in between parties, it's definitely worthwhile to check out some of their culinary options.

Photographs and title inspiration by Jimmy W., my food co-adventurer.  

Dine LA: Gordon Ramsay at the London

(Chicken fried sweetbreads and polenta)

(Short rib)

(Sticky toffee pudding with brown butter ice cream)

Decided to go out for Dine LA a little while ago, and was not disappointed. The sweetbreads had a wonderful texture to them, and worked well with the polenta. The short rib was a little greasy, but the side of beets and tomato helped with that.

While I'm not big on sweets, the dessert was one of the best I've ever had. My favorite aspect was the brown butter ice cream. Butter is such a great thing. I am not a healthy person.